As Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner insists a fiscal-cliff agreement is close, while House Speaker John Boehner says it's not, Colorlines' Imara Jones says this political deadline is about something else entirely. What's really at stake, argues Jones, is redistribution of wealth from whites to other Americans through taxes.

The truth of the matter is that for the past three decades we've constructed a tax policy that is responsible for the lowest level of black and brown wealth on record and a dramatic concentration of wealth amongst the overwhelmingly white economic elite. If that's to change, we need real talk on race in a way that's absent from the current debate.

According to the Federal Reserve, more than 9 out of 10 of the wealthiest Americans is white. Excluding defense and social security, a disproportionate number of Americans who benefit from government investments in health, education and economic opportunity programs—6 out of 10 federal dollars spent—are people of color.

Clearly, race is at the center of the debate over taxes, whether or not either party will admit it. Moreover, it has been so since the United States' earliest days.

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